ROGUE employers are docking the wages of young workers if customers pay with fake banknotes or a firm's "till is down", campaigners say.

Cases of younger workers facing pay deductions were highlighted by the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC).

Some staff are also being employed on "bogus" self employed contracts, the STUC said.

Young employees are particularly vulnerable to such employment conditions, it claimed.

In one case, a barista worker in a café in Glasgow was handed a contract stating that she was an ‘independent contractor’ and therefore in charge of her own National Insurance and tax payments, the STUC added.

Her employer also threatened to deduct wages if the till "was down" – which means there is less money in it than the till's record suggests there should be – or customers pay with fake banknotes, it said.

The cases were highlighted by the STUC as it held its youth congress at Clydebank yesterday.

STUC Youth Committee vice-chair Jack O’Neill, a member of the Unite union hospitality branch, said the incidents highlighted how young workers "are disempowered".

O’Neill added: "Unions rightly focus on protecting the conditions of work that have been won in the past.

"What’s so vital about this conference is that we are looking to the future, and putting in place the kind of education and technology that workers will need to prevent companies from having more and more power over our weekly, daily and hourly working lives."